


Snow and Ice

by NewUserNamesAreHard



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Err...really broken, Kaito is kind of broken, pre-kaishin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-07-19 07:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19970587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NewUserNamesAreHard/pseuds/NewUserNamesAreHard
Summary: Shinichi knew it was a mistake the moment he did it. But it was too late for regrets now. He was tangled up in the Sentinel’s thoughts, being pulled deeper and deeper into a mind he had no place being in. Too deep to get back out of.(Expanded from 'Wasteland' oneshot.)





	1. Wasteland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is expanded from a oneshot I'd posted previously. The first chapter hasn't changed.

Shinichi knew it was a mistake the moment he did it. But it was too late for regrets now. He was tangled up in the Sentinel’s thoughts, being pulled deeper and deeper into a mind he had no place being in. Too deep to get back out of.

_“How did you get in here?”_

Shinichi felt a shiver run up his spine. The voice was cold. Colder than the wind that whipped around him, stealing his warmth and numbing him down to the bone.

_“What? Too good to answer, **Detective**?”_ The voice questioned from the dark, its owner hidden behind blowing snow and midnight pitch.

Shinichi licked his lips. “What is this place, KID?”

_“Home, sweet home.”_ The voice replied. _“Now, don’t you think its time you answered some of **my** questions?”_

Shinichi spun in place. The voice had been right behind him. Close enough that he should have felt the thief’s breath against his skin. “Where are you KID?”

_“Detectives, always asking questions, but never answering them.”_

“You Zoned out.” Shinichi explained as he stared out into the darkness. “And I Reached Out without thinking.”

_“I think what you meant to say, was that you couldn’t pass up the chance to catch me.”_

“No. I wouldn’t… we’ve never been like that KID.”

KID’s laughter felt like nails on a chalkboard. _“Haven’t we? You are the detective from the clock tower, aren’t you? Reappeared at the most inconvenient of times.”_

“I… Yes. But… I didn’t know you then.”

_“And you think you know me now?”_

“Of course I do!”

The thief laughed again, the sound seeming to echo off the walls of blowing snow. _“Really, now. If you are going to lie, at least try to make it believable.”_

Shinichi stumbled back a step. This wasn’t KID. It couldn’t be KID. The mind was far too cold to match the man. “It’s not a lie.”

_“No?”_ KID questioned as he walked out of the storm. He was in costume. Or something that resembled his costume. A white suit, a matching top hat, and a monocle in place over his left eye. Only this version of KID was colorless; Skin pale, and hair iced over and covered in frost. The vibrancy that Shinichi had believed to be at KID’s very core, conspicuously absent.

Shinichi swallowed harshly. He’d seen that expression before. It looked back at him from the mirror every morning. It was desperate yearning, mixed with unsurmountable despair. “It’s not a lie.” Shinichi repeated.

_“Then do call me by name won’t you, Meitantei?”_

Shinichi licked his lips. KID was testing him. And he was going to fail. “I don’t know it.”

KID cocked his head to the side, a single, dull indigo eye trained on Shinichi. The other hidden behind a frosted over monocle lens. _“Yet you claim to know me.”_

“I know what you let me see.”

KID’s eye narrowed, his lips turning up into a sneer. _“That single night you tired to shoot me off the top of a building?”_

Shinichi shivered, but not from the cold. He’d long since lost the feeling of touch to the arctic air. “No. All the nights I chased you.”

_“All the…”_ KID’s words died off, a spark seeming to light in his visible eye. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on Shinichi’s part. _“Tantei-kun?”_

Shinichi smiled, brittle as glass. “KID.”

The wind stopped howling as KID knelt, his right hand reaching out as if to check that Shinichi was real.

“I can’t be myself in the real world anymore.” Shinichi told the thief; as if that would be enough to reconcile the teen he’d been with the boy he’d become.

And maybe it was.

Snow stopped falling as the clouds overhead cleared away. _“That makes two of us I suppose.”_ KID mused, his usual cadence sounding wrong alongside the chill in his tone. The thief straightened. _“No reason you can’t be you, while you’re here though.”_

Shinichi blinked. Where exactly was here? Before him stretched a garden of colorful roses, every row a different hue, and every single bloom preserved forever in a coat of ice. “What is this place, KID?”

KID frowned. _“I told you, Tantei-kun. This is home.”_

“But it’s so…”

_“Grand? Magnificent? Awe inspiring?”_

“Cold.”

_“Ah… that. I hardly notice anymore. It’s been this way for years. No sense in making a big deal about it now.”_

Years. The word seemed to echo in Shinichi’s ears. Behind the grins, and the laughter, and the breath-taking pranks, KID’s mindscape had been like this for years. “Doesn’t your Guide worry about you?”

KID shrugged. _“They probably would, if I had one.”_

“You’re only a 1S?” It didn’t feel right, but it was the only explanation that fit. If he’d tested as anything higher, KID would have been bonded at the same time he came Online.

_“On paper.”_

Shinichi felt a knot form his throat. The implications of that statement... KID must have taken over his predecessor’s role before he’d ever come Online. Then, one day, he’d found himself here. In a wasteland of snow and ice. Alone. With no way out.

_Home, sweet home._ The thief had said. And now that Shinichi was really looking, he could see it. The effort KID had poured into this place. A place he’d spent more time in than any Sentinel should have to. Because those roses weren’t really roses, just ice, sculpted from stalk to petal. The colors added one thread at a time, the hues all fashioned from the blues and reds of KIDs missing accessories.

There was KIDs vibrancy. Spread thin across an empty, white world. Heart wrenchingly spectacular, in a way that only KID could be.

_“Well, you’d best be going, Tantei-kun.”_ KID’s trademark grin stretched across his face. _“I’ve got a daring escape to complete.”_

_And you’ve got someone to get back to._ Words unspoken, written clearly in lonely indigo eyes.

Shinichi woke to the gruff voice of Nakamori-keibu. “Don’t feel too bad, Conan-kun. KID’s a slippery bastard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because trying to sort out landscaping is making me feel a little deranged.


	2. Roses in the Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoning Out is pretty much Kaito's least favorite thing ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just because I got so many nice comments asking for more. I hope it meets all your expectations.

Katio shivered as he rolled out of bed. It had been a long time since he’d felt this cold, his limbs heavy and his fingers slow to respond. But it would pass. Just as it had before. Who cared if his mindscape was frozen over? As far as the rest of the world was concerned, he was just as happy-go-lucky as he’d always been. No one really knew him.

_No one. No one. No one._

Except for maybe Tantei-kun… But, now that he’d seen Kaito’s mind up close and personal…

The detective wouldn’t stick around. No one would.

Another shiver tried to work its way up Kaito’s spine. He stopped it though, shaking the stiffness from his joints and throwing on his school uniform. It didn’t matter that he was a Sentinel. It didn’t matter that he was Zoning Out more and more frequently. He could hold it together long enough to find Pandora. And that was all that really mattered.

_Nothing else. Nothing else. Nothing else._

“Kaito, are you okay?”

“Of course, I am, Ahoko.”

Concerned blue eyes stared back at Kaito from his best friend’s face. “Then did you see something out the window?”

“Not really… Why do you ask?”

Aoko clasped her hands in front of her, eyes flickering down as if she’d rather avoid the conversation she had started. “I think you Zoned Out.”

Kaito chuckled. He wished Aoko would stop using the term ‘Zone Out’ every time he got distracted. “Yeah, it wasn’t a very interesting class. Next period will be better though.”

“Kaito, school is over for the day.”

_Over. Over. Over._

“What?” Then he’d actually Zoned Out… For how long? The last thing he remembered was the first few minutes of first period literature.

Aoko bit her lip. “I know that you’re only a 1S. But maybe you should try to find a Guide.”

“I don’t need one. I’m fine by myself.” Kaito lied.

Aoko’s apprehension turned to anger. “Bakaito! Don’t you understand that I’m worried about you?” Then, just as quickly, the anger was gone. “I don’t know what I’d do if you didn’t come back.”

Kaito knew what she would do though. She’d run to Hakuba for comfort. And he’d be there for her in a way that Kaito couldn’t. Not since Kaito had become the Kaitou KID. And Aoko became his most dedicated heckler. “It’s fine, Aoko. It doesn’t happen that often.”

She looked like she wanted to protest, but Kaito didn’t have it in him to listen. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. I have doves to feed and homework to do.”

Not that his doves lived with him anymore. Jii had taken them months ago when Kaito had Zoned Out with the coup door open for the second time. The door hadn’t really been the issue though, more the fact that he’d dropped the water dispenser he’d been intending to refill and left his birds without water for the 5 hours he was Out. They deserved better. So they lived with Jii.

_Not him. Not him. Not him._

Kaito’s footsteps echoed in his ears as he made his escape. His heartbeat erratically pounding along. He was on the edge of a Zone again. Not even 10 minutes after being shaken from the last one. And he hated it.

His body moved on its own, his mind spinning in circles, switching from one sense to the next in attempt to keep his consciousness afloat. But eventually, inevitably, it failed.

And Kaito was left alone.

_Alone. Alone. Alone._

Save for the roses in the snow.

He’d thought about building a bench once. To sit on and look out over them. Back when he’d still been sculpting each petal and thorn. But benches are for people. Not _a_ person.

_“KID?”_

Kaito stumbled to his feet, poker face slamming into place as he looked for the voice’s owner. “Tantei-kun~?”

But there was no one there. There was never anyone there.

Maybe Tantei-kun’s last visit had been all in his head too. A vision his mind had crafted has he hovered on the edge of sanity, looking for any reason not to jump.

_Jump. Jump. Jump._

_“KID? That is you, isn’t it?”_

Katio sighed, the moisture from his breath crystalizing in the air as his shoulders sagged. It wasn’t really surprising that he’d finally lost it.

_“If you don’t answer me, I’m coming in there.”_

And today was the day that pigs would fly.

A hand clamped down on Kaito’s shoulder. _“Oi. Don’t ignore me.”_

For a second, Kaito forgot how to breathe. Then the sky clouded over as the temperature plummeted.

_“Oi. Oi. No need to blot out the sun. I was just checking on you.”_

“What makes you think I need to be checked on, Meitantei?”

The blue-eyed teen raised an eyebrow. _“The train has gone a full circuit and you haven’t flipped a page in your book once.”_ He paused. Looking as if he was unsure if he should say something else. _“And your book is upside down.”_

Because, of course, that was something Tantei-kun would notice. “History is more interesting when you flip it on its head.”

The detective scoffed, his eyes rolling so hard it looked painful. Then he turned away, looking out at the horizon. Not that there was anything to see. _“Are you really okay?”_

Katio slung an arm across the detective’s shoulders. “Of course.” _Not._ “You worry too much Tantei-kun.”

_“It’s Shinichi.”_

Kaito hummed. “What is?”

_“My name. I’d like you to call me by it. Here at least.”_

Clearly, Kaito’s mind was playing tricks on him again. Composing cruel, twisted jokes. Because it sounded almost like, Tantei-kun wasn’t going to leave him.

_“Now then. Both of us need to be getting home. So…”_ The detective’s words cut off abruptly. _“Why are you crying?!”_

_Both of us. Both of us. Both of us._

For the first time since he’d come Online, Kaito’s tears didn’t freeze on his skin as they leaked from his eyes. “No reason.”


End file.
